Good TV (aka, the TV series spamthread), the second series

[Raid]

Oh, hah, that's what I get for skim-reading.

[Alan]

We started watching The Practice (Ally McBeal & Boston Legal's third in universe show). Its very dull so far with none of the character the other two shows have but maybe it will get better? Dylan McDermott annoys me.

Strange New Worlds (S1)
Its very Trek. I dont think its that good but it is very Trek and also very much more enjoyable than Discovery (as is a strangers fart in an elevator) but its not gelling with me for whatever reason. The plots are all just convenient chance. The writing just isnt great like the daughter arc that went nowhere and ended in that crap "we dont have a holodeck but we need a holodeck episode". I think that first episode just rubbed me the wrong way when in the last 3mins they solved a generations long planet wide conflict for dumb reasons. I kept going with Discovery I'll keep going here but ehhhh....

Fallout
One ep... I fooking loved the pre-bombs section. I thought that was really so well done. The rest is... well... its very faithful to the Bethesda feel. Its dumb and silly in not the best ways and I dunno if its for me but I'll keep going. That start was incredible (even though it was also very very dumb).


I'm just an old grumpy bastard. We started watching Bewitched from the start and thats still adorably wonderful and silly in a good way so I'm not completely dead inside ¬_¬

[Wrathbone]

Fallout
One ep... I fooking loved the pre-bombs section. I thought that was really so well done. The rest is... well... it’s very faithful to the Bethesda feel.

Honestly, it’s faithful to Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas too. Tim Cain gave it his stamp of approval, the showrunner has being playing them since the 90s and lots of the extras were apparently big Fallout fans who were allowed to ad lib little things from the games that they felt were appropriate. I felt like it was in safe hands the whole way through.

[Maturin]

It's brilliant stuff.

As far as game-based TV shows go, I'd still probably put The Last of Us S1 slightly ahead of it, that has more depth and a really great narrative. More thought-provoking too.

But Fallout is just so damn enjoyable it feels a bit unfair to criticise it for that. They've nailed the games, I don't think they could have produced anything better.

[Alan]

So the first 4 episodes of S2 of Strange New Worlds are actually quite excellent! (Overlooking the very lame huuuuge coincidence of the time travel one ¬_¬). This bodes well! S1 of TNG was crap too after all :p P

[Raid]

So I finished Fallout. I think my enthusiasm dipped a bit by the end; there's clearly a ton of love for the source material, and it's the most faithful game-TV/film adaptation I can think of in terms of aesthetic (and it must have cost a fortune to make as a result), but the tone just didn't seem to be quite right for me. Maybe I'm just not remembering the games all that well, but I felt the show takes itself maybe a little too seriously, there's not as much humour as I would have expected. Walton Goggins steals every scene he's in, but the rest of the cast don't quite stand out enough - I feel that it needs one or two more larger-than-life characters (across the duration of the series, not just in a couple of scenes - Matt Berry was still doing Matt Berry things) to really match the games.

Still, it's apparently the second most-watched Prime show ever, and I'm not going to argue if it builds confidence in videogame adaptations as a whole. It's going to be rare that a game gets this much investment in an adaptation, and they've done a phenomenal job so far, I just think it could do with a little tweaking going forward now that the audience is established. It's already much better than I expected it to be regardless.

Spoiler

The scene with the assembled CEOs in the final episode really felt like it could have done with being a bit more tongue-in-cheek. I'm not expecting the CEO of Vault-tec to throw up his arms exclaiming "Capitalism!" while winking at the camera, but I just think they could have done more with that material.

Outside Xbox did a video on the questions a second season needs to answer, and they brought up an amusing fact. The show is evidently visiting New Vegas next time around, but Bethesda famously stiffed Obsidian on their bonus for the game that setting comes from. Are they finally going to reward them for the game that arguably made the series relevant again?

[Wrathbone]

Maybe I'm just not remembering the games all that well, but I felt the show takes itself maybe a little too seriously, there's not as much humour as I would have expected.

Conversely, I've seen people complaining that there's too much humour in it. They'll never win everyone.

If you go back to Fallout 1, there's very little overt humour in it - it's very dark, and the humour that is there isn't usually the silly kind that pervades the later games. I'd say the show has leaned more into Bethesda's take on comedy, but I've never seen Fallout as a comedy series really. It's a dramatic setting with dark comedy/satire undertones, which I think the show hit pretty well.

[Alan]

Finished it too and I feel the same way I did at the start. Its very faithful to the Bethesda style and kudos to it for that but I was just very cold to it all. Thing is I love retrofuturism and I love silly gratuitous violence so it should have landed with me but hayho. The humour was a bit annoying, not because it was there but because it was often crap, but it wasnt the sole reason it didnt land with me. A mystery for the ages.


Started Veil. Elizabeth Moss has to get a possible Isis woman to France. Is she or isnt she, who knows. Its alright, pretty standard but alright.

Also started The Tourist. Dude has amnesia and it seems like everyone is trying to kill him. Quite like it from the first ep so we'll see where it goes.